Friday, February 29, 2008

Because he's not a writer, that's why

Apparently, Rob Lowe got a little bored during the three-month Writers Guild of America strike; nobody was writing, so he couldn't do his thing, which is acting.

Suddenly Rob had a Big Thought: He would write his memoirs! He would do it all by himself, without a ghostwriter!

Publishers loved the idea. An auction ensued. The winning publishing house agreed to give Rob a million-dollar advance. Rob was ready to buy legal pads and sharpen his pencils.

And then, whoops, the WGA strike ended. Now Rob is acting again, which means he's too busy to write a book. Here's an excerpt from an article in The New York Observer:

The deal was just about ready to go—Mr. Abate [Rob Lowe's agent] had informed Mr. Karp [of Hatchette Book Group] that he had prevailed in the auction and contract negotiations were under way—when, on Wednesday the 13th, the writers' strike up and ended, and Mr. Lowe suddenly became an actor again.

Over the course of the next few days, as Hollywood rose from its three-month slumber and everybody went back to work, Mr. Lowe's schedule filled up quickly. First, according to Mr. Abate, ABC ordered something like 30 new episodes of Mr. Lowe's TV show, Brothers & Sisters. Then two major film projects emerged. Suddenly the next year was looking pretty busy, and Mr. Lowe had to face the fact that he just wouldn't have time to write his book.

"He is just booked for at least the next year straight," Mr. Abate said. "We're going to come back to Karp when he's done shooting all these things, if there's time then to do it. He doesn't want to commit to it because he doesn't know what he's going to be offered between now and then."

Okay, we get it. Rob Lowe's top priority is acting. Forget what he promised the publisher; he got a better offer and he had to go with it.

All of this has me wondering: Just how long did Rob Lowe think that writer's strike was going to last? Or is it simply that he thought he could knock off those memoirs in a long weekend or two?

Nonwriters. They just don't get it. Real writers write because they have to. Unlike Rob Lowe, they write even when they don't have time to write. They'll do without sleep if they must, writing between the hours of 4 and 6:00 a.m. before heading off to their day jobs.

That's hilarious. I loved it! And so very true - everybody thinks they are or want to be a writer. They say, "I've got some notes" but there's much more to it than that. Writers must write. And so they do - and not just talk about it.